About the blogger

Alex Friedrich reports on higher education issues for MPR News. Among the stories he has covered: the fall of the Berlin Wall, aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, 2003 Moscow suicide bombing and 2004 presidential elections in the Republic of Georgia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s in European political economy from the London School of Economics.

Related Blog Posts

I was listening and you were talking about College graduates taking part time jobs. You had quoted Obama as encouraging companies who were sitting on profits to hire. What I see happening not just in the job market is that companies and businesses are putting more and more responbilities or costs on the consumer and/or employee. For example, I work in the Health and Human Service arena(group homes and schools), they hire for 6 hours a day instead of 8 hours so they won’t have to pay health insurance. Or companies hire contract workers, etc. If this be the case then I think we need to be paying more per/hour for these types of jobs so that we can fund the health insurance and retirement accounts that we are threatened with for the future such as they things of medicare and social security not being there for us.

Anonymous

A fair point. But higher pay would counteract the savings companies were hoping to make by hiring only part-time. Not to stray too far off topic, but that’s one reason many European countries have socialized medicine and pensions. You’re covered for both (to varying degrees on the pensions), you can change jobs without worrying about coverage, and businesses aren’t saddled with the costs. But that would require a whole new tax structure. Either way, someone’s paying for it.